Think Humanely

Imagine a little girl, small for her age – shy, full of self doubt – who finds herself called into her principal’s office. The principal pulls down the blinds in his office. He locks the door. Then he tells the girl, not even a teenager, what she needs to do in order to succeed in school. He runs his hands across her still developing body. Soon the principal takes off his pants and demands that she takes off hers. He rapes her. But not just once. Several times. Over and over and over and over. He never stops. Ever. Not of his own free will. He only stops when he is finally transferred to a different school (where he simply starts again with another student) or becomes so old that he’s no longer capable of the same sexual abuse that he is so accustomed to.

Now try to imagine the type of people it would take to defend the principal in the scenario above. What kind of completely sick, twisted, completely fucked up individuals would support someone who actively rapes children? Try to imagine the people defending the principal by accusing his critics of bigotry. Try to imagine the people actively helping him get away with it so that he can continue to rape girl after girl after girl. Try not to stress yourself too much with what should be an impossible riddle. The answer is sadly predictable: the religious. A more specific answer is, of course, the Catholic Church.

Both the current and past popes (the former Pope is currently up for Sainthood) have intentionally conspired to cover-up the crimes of pedophile priests. Writes Christopher Hitchens

There are two separate but related matters here: First, the individual responsibility of the pope in one instance of this moral nightmare and, second, his more general and institutional responsibility for the wider lawbreaking and for the shame and disgrace that goes with it. The first story is easily told, and it is not denied by anybody. In 1979, an 11-year-old German boy identified as Wilfried F. was taken on a vacation trip to the mountains by a priest. After that, he was administered alcohol, locked in his bedroom, stripped naked, and forced to suck the penis of his confessor. (Why do we limit ourselves to calling this sort of thing “abuse”?) The offending cleric was transferred from Essen to Munich for “therapy” by a decision of then-Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, and assurances were given that he would no longer have children in his care. But it took no time for Ratzinger’s deputy, Vicar General Gerhard Gruber, to return him to “pastoral” work, where he soon enough resumed his career of sexual assault.

…

Very much more serious is the role of Joseph Ratzinger, before the church decided to make him supreme leader, in obstructing justice on a global scale. After his promotion to cardinal, he was put in charge of the so-called “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith” (formerly known as the Inquisition). In 2001, Pope John Paul II placed this department in charge of the investigation of child rape and torture by Catholic priests. In May of that year, Ratzinger issued a confidential letter to every bishop. In it, he reminded them of the extreme gravity of a certain crime. But that crime was the reporting of the rape and torture. The accusations, intoned Ratzinger, were only treatable within the church’s own exclusive jurisdiction. Any sharing of the evidence with legal authorities or the press was utterly forbidden. Charges were to be investigated “in the most secretive way … restrained by a perpetual silence … and everyone … is to observe the strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office … under the penalty of excommunication.” (My italics). Nobody has yet been excommunicated for the rape and torture of children, but exposing the offense could get you into serious trouble. And this is the church that warns us against moral relativism! (See, for more on this appalling document, two reports in the London Observer of April 24, 2005, by Jamie Doward.)

The Church even accuses those with the “audacity” to point out these crimes of being the equivalent of anti-Semites. Those poor rapists – how evil and prejudiced we all must be to condemn them for torturing children and women. PZ Myers adds the following damning piece of information:

The Stranger has a revealing article on pedophile priests — in particular, it focuses on the native populations of Alaska and Canada, which were used as a nice, obscure dumping ground for the very worst sexual predators the Catholic Church could provide. Small children were raped, entire villages are decimated by mental health trauma and suicides brought on by these monsters, and in one particularly appalling instance, a priest was caught raping a dying woman he was supposed to give the last rites. There’s also an interview with a former priest who was a “cleaner” (yes, he actually calls himself that), brought in to tidy up the messes these evil men brought into a community…before they got shipped off to another community.

The sheer concentration of known sex offenders in these isolated communities begins to look less like an accident than a plan. Their institutional protection looks less like an embarrassed cover-up than aiding and abetting. And the way the church has settled case after case across the country, refusing to let most of them go to trial for a public airing, is starting to look like an admission of guilt.
Here’s the reason why the church covers up for rapist priests.

“Why does the church keep sending these priests, who have come to be such a major liability, back into ministry? ‘It’s all about keeping the stores open, keeping the revenue rolling,’ Wall says. The Alaskan provinces in particular, Wall says, were a source of revenue–not from the Native population living there, but from parishioners in the lower 48 who were encouraged to donate for the Native ministry up north. ‘You could raise thousands to fund a mission that cost very little to run,’ Wall says. ‘The profit margin is huge.’”

In the hypothetical that opens this post, men and women would raise all forms of hell. Parents would lay waste to all those who committed these vile atrocities and those who protected them. But not when it comes to religion in general or the Catholic Church in particular. Organized religion gets a walk. The Pope will never be charged with anything. The majority of these priests will never face any significant punishment, as has always been the case. Children and women will continue to be systematically abused and raped, and it’s all because people respect an institution that is entirely undeserving of it.